/lit/ - Literature

>Australians to-day are certainly not an admirable people, yet in their supineness they remain smug, gullible, and self-complacent. Their lack of spirit is possibly due to a conviction of the impossibility of changing conditions for the better.
>[The Anzac's] gravestone to-day is a rather ugly pile of masonry in Hyde Park, Sydney, rendered all the more unsuitable by its nearness to the grace and beauty of the Archibald Memorial Fountain. But its setting is symbolical. The huddled, hopeless forms of the down-and-outs who occupy the park benches in its vicinity create a suitable surrounding atmosphere. I think the whole memorial is a work of genius. It typifies with amazing exactitude the measure of our gratitude for the sacrifices of our soldiers. “Put up a tombstone—let fall an emotional tear—and go to the pictures!
>That we are not British in character is demonstrated by our susceptibility to the more vulgar Americanisms. We are receptive to “American talkie” atmosphere, to that country's political unscrupulousness, and the sham culture of Hollywood finds ready, if somewhat ridiculous imitators, in every class, while those things which we could with advantage learn from the United States never cross the Pacific. Even in entertainment, American negro music, with its coarse, phallic qualities, pleases the ear and awakes the fancies of young and old alike.

>>12477384
Sounds like a proto-commie. Was this Campbell fellow a proto-commie/Green?

>>12477331
>Freedom! That’s what they always say. “You feel free in Australia.” And so you do. There is a great relief in the atmosphere, a relief from tension, from pressure. An absence of control or will or form. The sky is open above you, and the air is open around you. Not the old closing-in of Europe.

>But what then? The VACANCY of this freedom is almost terrifying. In the openness and the freedom this new chaos, this litter of bungalows and tin cans scattered for miles and miles, this Englishness all crumbled out into formlessness and chaos. Even the heart of Sydney itself — an imitation of London and New York, without any core or pith of meaning. Business going on full speed: but only because it is the other end of English and American business.

>The absence of any inner meaning: and at the same time the great sense of vacant spaces. The sense of irresponsible freedom. The sense of do-as-you-please liberty. And all utterly uninteresting. What is more hopelessly uninteresting than accomplished liberty? Great swarming, teeming Sydney flowing out into these myriads of bungalows, like shallow waters spreading, undyked. And what then? Nothing. No inner life, no high command, no interest in anything, finally.

>>12477389
Nah he was a fascie

>>12477331
>I say we have a bitter heritage, but that is not to run it down. Tourmaline is the estate, and if I call it heritage I do not mean that we are free in it. More truly we are tenants; tenants of shanties rented from the wind, tenants of the sunstruck miles. Nevertheless I do not scorn Tourmaline. Even here there is something to be learned; even groping through the red wind, after the blinds of dust have clattered down, we discover the taste of perfunctory acts of brotherhood: warm, acidic, undemanding, fitting a derelict independence.

>I had had my morning rendezvous with the world, my walk to the war memorial, and so come to the time of day when I doubt the reality of myself. Those names give me a name. But when I am quiet and alone, and have turned on the wireless (as on every morning for—ah, too many years) and have spoken, and have listened, and as on every morning since these terrible times began have heard no answer—when I am quiet and alone I cannot believe in it. Who gave me this name? And beside the name, what is there?

>>12477331

In 1899, Henry Lawson declared that any talented Australian writer would be well-advised "to study elementary anatomy, especially as applies to the cranium, and then shoot himself carefully with the aid of a looking glass".